Are complexity and uncertainty distinct concepts in project management? A taxonomical examination from literature

Project management research is characterized by dominance of determinism, decision-theoretic approaches, and weak theories. The growth of research interest in non-deterministic paradigms through the lenses of complexity and uncertainty is recent, and could provide stronger theoretic explanations. However, analysis of select project management literature reveals that the constructs of complexity and uncertainty are yet to be grounded in terms of definitions and constituent variables. We argue that definitional clarity is necessary for the non-deterministic research to move forward. In this paper, we propose taxonomy of constituent terms of complexity and uncertainty based on semantic analysis of select literature and show that the two constructs are broadly confounded in their constituent terms. While our finding may appear to align with complexity theoretic concept of strong interrelationship between complexity and uncertainty, we argue that such confounding represents intermingling of varying ontological and epistemological preferences within the community of project management scholars rather than a broad adherence to the complexity theory. The paper contributes to project management literature by facilitating further research toward stronger construct definitions and theory-building efforts. The paper also contributes to research methods by offering a novel methodology to elicit taxonomy of terms and to illuminate the confounding and separating terms across multiple constructs. •Weak theories of project management imply limited generalizability.•Non-deterministic approaches could yield stronger theoretic explanations.•Complexity and uncertainty are terminologically confounded.•Ontological and epistemological intermingling is a possible cause of confounding.